Monday, August 03, 2009

Silly Monkey Story - Dresses on the Playground

Dova has always been a girly-girl interested in princesses, dressing up and make up. This is totally foreign to me, but I just let her be her own person. Everyday when she gets dressed, she tries to find a dress in her closet first, then a skirt with a shirt, and her last choice is shorts or pants. But when we go to a playground, she loses any girly inhibitions and is 100% monkey. On this trip, I taught her how to climb upside down in the geodesic dome and flip herself over. She took this one step further by hanging completely upside down from her legs before flipping over. Of course, wearing a dress pretty much leaves everything revealed when she is hanging upside down. She was happy to show off for these photographs, but afterwards she told me not to post them because she was embarrassed of her underwear showing. I assured her that it was fine because she looked really awesome doing her flips. I was going to heed her wishes, but then she watched as I post-processed the photos and agreed that it was too awesome not to post. (Either that, or I've been doing some great brain-washing.)

First, here is her brother Adam showing her the ropes.

Adam is big enough to touch the ground in a handstand before flipping over, so it's not such a stretch. Not a stretch for an 8-year-old that is, you won't be catching me doing this move!

When Dova hangs, her hands don't reach the ground.

So she actually has to unhook her legs and fall towards the ground before she can catch herself with her hands.

She did many belly flops onto the bark mulch before she mastered this. Here's a sequence where she successfully flipped down.

Yay!! She was so proud of herself. Definitely going to be a gymnast.

So you tell me, are posting photos going too far? They have been up on Flickr for a few weeks completely untagged, and they have significant more views than the nearby photos, so the sickos are definitely checking them out. But she is not naked, and there's nothing obscene or suggestive. It's really not that different than if she were wearing a bikini bathing suit under her dress. And we both agreed that it was postable (we have yet to see whether she will be too embarrassed five years from now). She said that next time she's going to wear a skirt under her dress so she can do her flips. I guess you can't take the monkey or the girly-girl out of her!